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Wild Conviction: Sixteen Is Power (Novel)

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Intro:

Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome to The Resilient Writers Radio Show. I'm your host, Rhonda Douglas. And this is the podcast for writers who want to create and sustain a writing life they love. 

Because let's face it, the writing life has its ups and downs, and we want to not just write, but also to be able to enjoy the process so that we'll spend more time with our butt-in-chair getting those words on the page. 

This podcast is for writers who love books and everything that goes into the making of them. For writers who want to learn and grow in their craft and improve their writing skills. Writers who want to finish their books and get them out into the world so their ideal readers can enjoy them. Writers who want to spend more time in that flow state. 

Writers who want to connect with other writers to celebrate and be in community, in this crazy roller coaster ride, we call the writing life. We are resilient writers. We're writing for the rest of our lives and we're having a good time doing it. So welcome, Writer. I'm so glad you're here. Let's jump right into today's show.

Rhonda:

Well hey there, writer. Welcome back to another episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. Today we're going to talk about characters, writing compelling characters, writing heroic characters, believing in your story. And today, I have Mary Dezember with me. Hi, Mary. How are you? 

Mary:

Fine. How are you, Rhonda? Thanks so much for having me. 

Rhonda:

My pleasure. So let me just introduce Mary to everyone. She has a novel called Wild Conviction with Brilliant Moon Press. It's a richly historical coming of age, socially conscious epic adventure with touches of magic and love. Wild Conviction was the gold winner of the 2024 Human Relations Indie Book Awards, Historical Realistic Fiction, and a finalist in the 2024 Feathered Quill Book Awards, and a Red Ribbon winner in the 2023 Wishing Shelf Awards. 

Her publications also include several nonfiction essays and articles, fiction, and two books of poetry. Earth-Marked Like You with Sunstone Press and Still Howling with CreateSpace Independent Publishing. And she also has her PhD in comparative literature and has been a professor of English for a long time, over 21 years teaching different aspects of writing and comparative arts. And currently she teaches her own writing courses on how to create stories in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Welcome Mary, so glad that you're here. 

Mary:

Thank you. 

Rhonda:

So Mary, when I say the words, the words heroic characters to you, what comes to mind for you? Like, what do you think of as writing heroic characters? Because your novel, Wild Conviction for young adults has a heroic character at the center of that. So can you just...kind of give us a little bit of a taste of what heroic characters means for you. 

Mary:

Yes. And, but first I'd like to say that Wild Conviction isn't really for young adult. I mean, it is young adults can certainly read it, but it is all the categories for it or for adult readers. But it certainly, yeah, it's certainly suitable though, for young adult readers. I wrote it that way. So, but heroic characters are those who overcome an obstacle.

So they are introspective, they change for the better, and they believe in a new day, a better day, and doing what they can to improve human relations in the world. So of course, that can be any number of things in a story, depending on how they improve maybe their own life to maybe a bigger heroic mission, which Twilight finds herself in, inadvertently, to even try to reach out and do more than that.

So heroic characters, you can find them in memoirs. If you're writing about yourself, to me there needs to be something heroic about what you're doing in the sense of you wanna change your life or you're being introspective and finding something and there's an obstacle you have to overcome and you see it in poetry as well. But definitely in fiction stories, that's who makes our protagonist, but a lot of other characters.

Rhonda:

So does a story have to be kind of socially conscious like a overcoming injustice storyline in order for my character to, for me to be thinking of my character as heroic? 

Mary:

Well, no, but let me qualify a little bit because there is the antagonist then, and these are the ones who are, well, on the extreme side are the villains, if you're in that kind of story.

But on maybe a smaller scale, they're the ones who thwart the protagonist or the main characters or the heroic character. Their mission, their advancement in life, whatever that is, whatever level that happens to be. And so the... So it can be any...thing that the person needs to overcome, but we tend to think of heroic characters as being ones who are trying to do something better in their own life or even on a bigger scale in human relations. It's the antagonists who are wanting to thwart that. 

Rhonda:

Okay. So, so our heroic character, our protagonist is, you know, trying to create a better world in some way, shape or form, right?

Mary:

Yeah

Rhonda:

Whether it's just scale or large scale. 

Mary:

Yeah, right. It can just be a better world in their own world. But there's a sense of values and integrity to what they're doing. So yeah, yeah. 

Rhonda:

And you tell me, why don't you tell me a little bit about your novel, Wild Conviction and the journey of your protagonist as like a way to illustrate this notion of heroic characters. 

Mary:

So my protagonist, the, you know, the inciting event with her 16th birthday and opening a letter that her beloved grandma ma who had passed away when she was 12 had left for her. And in it, she finds two huge secrets that her grandma ma wants her to keep quiet. Yeah, in order for her to live quite honestly, because they can be life threatening secrets.

But they also put kind of a heavy burden or mission on this young woman. However, the novel starts in 1858 in an extremely terrible time in our country's history. It's the antebellum period right before the Civil War breaks out. And Twilight has been raised in the North by an abolitionist grandma ma. But when her grandmama dies, when she's age 12, she sent back to her family, her parents, who live in Memphis, Tennessee, which is the largest inland trading port for cotton and enslaved people. So she's against this, and she's 16 and she's female. She's against it anyway, but what she learns in the latter incites her, ignites her really to be her outspoken self. She's very outspoken and so what happens over the course of the three years of the novel that ends when she's 19 is a lot of things. 

She's misguided in ways she, in trial and error for her, of trying to figure out what it is she's supposed to do with this information and then that leads her into loves and you know, moving around and trying to get involved in doing things covertly and all of that. So yeah.

Rhonda:

Wow. So it's a historical novel. Can you talk to me a little bit about the peculiarities or challenges of writing fiction set in that time? Like what kind of work did you have to do to make the novel work as something that would come alive for the reader on the page? You know, 2024. 

Mary:

That's a great question. I love that question, Rhonda. And that's going to kind of go back to the characters. And my second point, when I talk about believing in your story, whether your story is your memoir or your fiction you're writing or poems, I think of story is being whatever we're writing, basically. And those are the character connection and the power of urgency.

And I have had great reviews and editorial reviews saying, I feel like I'm really there. So yes, it took a great amount of research and to put the reader actually in that time period. 

However, the one thing that I did because of this and I didn't wanna perpetuate, I just didn't wanna deal with the whole issues of words and their connotations and I definitely was not going to use any derogatory words. I feel that perpetuates and then you get them into our present day and then people will say well isn't that how they spoke in those times and to be accurate aren't you that's a bigger topic but number one I do think our version of history has been created in part by Hollywood. 

When you go back and you read newspaper articles in that time period. I haven't read a lot of letters, but some, and things like that, things that were written in that time, you start to find that, you know, a lot of that was probably brought about by Hollywood and then also the Jim Crow era and stuff like that bringing back. And I'm not, yeah, I'm not saying they didn't talk like that, but I do think there were ways that they would communicate. And then, regardless, I didn't want to go that route.

So I created the terms rich tone and pale for skin tone. And that's what you use throughout in a highly researched scenario. But it really did open up a lot of positive ways to be able to address the issues and take the connotations off of words that have changed or that can be derogatory. And with that said, I also have slight magical realism aspects to it as well. Very slight. Okay. But there, there are some magical, so Twilight finds she's got these subtle powers that are just kind of emerging throughout the whole three years, and other things, but so it's this interesting way. I think. 

Rhonda:

Are playing around with, um, history at the same time, a little bit. 

Mary:

Yeah. It's. Possibility. So it's not an alternative history story. It's actually very rooted. There are people, there are, you know, things mentioned, things that I got from, you know, heavy research. So it isn't, I'm not making alternative history by any means. It's actually the real history. And I've had a lot of people tell me, wow, I've really learned a lot about our nation's history in this because it was more interesting to read than the way history books, but, you know, but.. Yes, I didn't want to perpetuate and deal with words I didn't want to. Uh, and so I had to come up with another way. And I did have sensitivity readers read it and a lot of beta readers and, and it's so far, and even with editorial and customer reviews, people are responding well to that. So I think I answered your question about historical accuracy and also when I feel it's important to not perpetuate certain things through language. 

Rhonda:

Right, right, I love that. So Mary, can you say a little more about, you have these two points under believing in your story. I'd love to hear a little bit more about kind of your framework, if you like, for believing in your story and why that matters so much. 

Mary:

Oh, good, thanks. And that kind of brings us back. I said, well, that question deals with my first two, but then I...Yeah, I didn't really deal with them directly. I mean, they're always there in everything I'm doing, the kind of underlying structure. So the character or persona connection, and I use persona because in poetry, that's the word for the speaker. A lot of times there's, it can be characters in poetry, but a lot of times it's a speaker. But in memoirs, we think of characters as being, you know, our, the actors and the same in fiction. It's the actors in the story, the characters. And so, for me, the character connection is about making your characters human. So how do we do that? Well, we give them human condition aspects. So what that means is that we all as humans share similar things like emotions, you know, the need to be loved, the need to have identity, the need to be part of community.

And so humans share desires and needs. We wanna be safe, healthy, free, all of that. We wanna have, find our talents, have a purpose. And then we share emotions such as anger, fear, bravery, disgust, tolerance, all of that. But characters like people, they have these desires, needs and emotional motivations in different degrees and demonstrate them in different ways. And so the antagonists already mentioned, they try to thwart that.

So when the they have anti-social behaviors. So when our heroic character our main character faces these antagonists and these villains, they become villains to us too because we have identified with the main character the heroic character showing the types of emotions and desires and needs that we as human being have that are not the anti-social behaviors we don't want to identify with the anti-social behaviors of these villains. And so if you've ever cheered inside or out loud when your hero confronts a villain, then that's connection. 

We get to do it too through them. So making them have that human, they become very human for us, they become real. And then the power of urgency is my second point. I actually have three and the power of urgency is it's the pull. It's the quality in your writing that attracts and holds interest because something important and precious, and I use that word in the way of being valuable and notable, is happening. And so if you have something to express and you want it heard, you still have to craft the story, revise, have beta readers, you know, it's still a lot of work. You don't just throw your stuff out there.

But it's there and it's important and you want it heard and you put that special something that vibrant desire in the characters who have a mission of some sort, so to speak, again, whether the missions just to improve their life. And then the third is the magic of the muse and all I want to say about that is, and this kind of reminds me I absolutely love your earlier podcast that you had on why our writing is important.

Rhonda:

Right, right. Yeah, I love that one too. Yeah. 

Mary:

Oh my gosh, I listen to it over and over. I've posted it on my social media for people because even people not writing, I think it's so relevant to hear what you have to say there, Rhonda, about why what we're doing in the creative life is important and why we need to do it first for ourselves. Number one, and I totally agree. I just feel better when I'm writing. But then at some point you feel like you want to share it. And people want to hear it. So you you I mean, I re-urge anybody to listen to that. I love it. So this kind of addresses a little bit. I was listening to that and I'm like, yeah, yeah, I agree, Rhonda. The magic of the muse is when the act of creation happens and magic happens. So creation starts to create and our art takes over, our characters make choices, our prose and poetry makes our hands flow over the keyboard or with the pen and the fiction becomes real.

So we get to ride the thrilling waves and glide on the wings of it all. And so if you believe in your story, the conviction, and in my case, the wild conviction that what you write is worth sharing, then it gives the writer wings. And with all of that, I want to say I, in relating this to believing in your story, because my topic was so difficult and I will say that I spent decades. I mean, I was doing other things, getting a PhD and you know, raising children. So it wasn't just everyday working on this story. I did get to a point in the last few years where I finally did that. But over the course of years, it was such a difficult topic that at times I thought, I just, you know, I'm a white person trying to write about an antebellum topic. 

Why am I doing this? But something in me believed in my characters and...I just couldn't let it go. I kept trying. I did write some other novels that will be coming out soon, but this one I had to get done first. So it was that sense of, I just believed in it, even when I felt like other people didn't believe in it or wondered what in the heck I was doing. But I did take steps. Like I said, I have sensitivity readers. I had a lot of beta readers. I really tested the waters with what I was doing.

But while I kept thinking, give it up and do a different topic, I just, I believed in what I, and so what I was doing. And so it's been gratifying to get good reviews and the award, the gold award in, you know, human relations, indie fiction. 

Rhonda:

So when you're talking about believing in your story, I mean, for you, it sounds like that was really. You know, it's got different elements, but it really was your call to write a particular story. You can't get away from it. You know, it's, it's coming through. Yeah. And so that was really central to your, to your motivation over the time that it took to write this story. Is that right? 

Mary:

Yeah, that's a great. Yes. Thank you. That was a great summary of it. Yes. 

Rhonda:

Yeah. Yeah. So I love what you said about getting sensitivity readers, because as you know, as you've said, like you're a white woman writing about, um, enslaved people in American history. And so it's possible to do that wrong in so many ways, right? Can you talk about, um, when you decided to get sensitivity readers and how you went about that? Um, and what kind of feedback you were looking for from your sensitivity readers? 

Mary:

Yes. Great question. So I have, uh, friends who are black and have for many years. And so I reached out to some of them and then they are friends, but I said, you've gotta be honest with me here. And I have to say they wanna be honest about it. And we're hesitant too. It isn't a time period that some of them often wanna read about. And again, every person sensitivity reader who reads it isn't, you can't speak for the whole group.

You know, so I'm not going to say that there's going to be everybody out there in a particular heritage that's going to think I did an absolutely great job with this or whatever. But then I did have also some I had someone reach out to me, who would it be a sensitivity reader and said I'd like to read this, which I was thrilled. 

Rhonda:

Okay, yeah media or just they heard you were writing the book or.

Mary:

Well, I actually did meet this person through social media. And then we kind of became social media friends and she's a great writer and poet, an amazing person. That's what attracted me to her. I was doing a show during COVID called Creatives in Conversation and I invited her to read her poetry.

And yeah, I didn't ask her, I was thinking about it, but she reached out to me and I was thrilled. And she did give me some helpful critique, but it wasn't actually about that topic. It was about other things because she's a writer. But yeah, but also there was some things though too about the characters, because the people that I have that are...black in the story are, and in my story they're rich tone, that's the term I use. There are some major players, but they're not the ones I'm working with as much. Although when you read one of the secrets about my protagonist Twilight, I could tell you but I'm hoping people will. 

Rhonda:

No spoilers, no spoilers. 

Mary:

Yeah, yeah. Then that opens up a whole other issue. Like a whole another issue. So it was a vantage point that I felt like I could work with in her situation. Anyway, Yeah, it. So that's where I found my sensitivity readers and I do feel as though they were people who were going to be very honest with me, although I did know them. You can find sensitivity readers that you don't know and who you don't know, I mean, and then you can find out whether, you know, what they think overall, you know, about that situation so. 

Rhonda:

I love that you did that, though. I think that it's so easy for us to think that we have the “right perspective” going into writing a story based in a certain context and time and perspective. And so we don't necessarily need a sensitivity reader because we think we're doing okay. And we're just, there are a lot of subtleties to things. And I think, I love that you did that. That's so great. So- 

Mary:

Yeah, thank you. It was pretty much walking a type wrote a lot of times and pretty difficult to maneuver. But again, that belief kept coming back. And then when I did get beta readers and since. So beta readers that were reading it were of different genders, ages, racial, and so forth and they were saying, I like this story, like this is a real story, you know, and I like the character and everything. So and then when I focused in on beta readers to really look at this one particular issue, you know, the racial issue or whatever, I was getting that people felt it was a story and they like the characters. And so I felt like it's important for this to be read, but I have to maneuver this and it was difficult. I gotta say Rhonda, many times I just wanted to give up and that's why I'm so honored to be on your show. Besides the fact that I absolutely love it, the resilient, it felt like I had to really test my resilience writing this novel. 

Rhonda:

Yes, it's so, the easiest thing in the world is to give up and not write the book, right? It's so easy, it's the world's easiest thing. Yeah, so, but I'm glad you stuck with it. That's amazing. So, and also I really love this perspective of the heroic character of them having, in the same way the writer has, you know, when you talk about believing in your story, the writer has a mission, a story they wanna tell, and a sense of urgency to get it out into the world, but also the character has a bit of a mission, you know, to leave the world a little better than they found it. So, which is what we're all trying to do in the end, I think as writers. I believe we do that anyway. 

Mary:

Yes. And again, your podcast about that, your episode about that. Oh my gosh. You just spoke so perfectly. I felt about why that is kind of our mission and our calling and we need to do it. And if we don't, something's missing in our lives. And then strangely, when you get it out there, other people start connecting. It's really quite magical.

Rhonda:

Absolutely. And you've got to hang in there. You've got to keep going in order to get the story that only you can write out into the world to connect with people. So, yeah, so true. Well, Mary, I want to say thanks for you for taking the time to be with us today. I think this is so great. So, um, where can people go to find out more about you? 

Mary:

So my website is my name, marydezember.com. All one word, Mary Dezember and it's DZ. Oh, great. Good. So you can find out just about everything about me there and my different books and so forth. Yeah. 

Rhonda:

Well, thanks so much for being here, Mary. I really appreciate that you came. 

Mary:

Thank you again so much, Rhonda. This has been wonderful.

Outro:

Thanks so much for hanging out with me today and for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed today's episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. While you're here, I would really appreciate it if you'd consider leaving a rating and review of the show. You can do that in whatever app you're using to listen to the show right now, and it just takes a few minutes. 

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